Can America Achieve Avocado Independence?

As Jersey is fond of screaming in ALLCAPS, "ENERGY IS A GLOBALLY TRADED COMMODITY!!!" And he is right.

But we shouldn't let that keep us from extracting our own gas and oil.  I'd rather put our own people to work and have a dependable supply system on hand in case of global emergency.  Also, the Canada pipeline, while not giving us energy independence, does allow us to purchase more oil from a friendly neighbor and therefore less from people who hate us.

Jonathan Thompson explains the folly of pursuing energy independence.  He's a green energy liberal, but he doesn't resort to the usual tendentious tactics.  His article is firmly grounded in mainstream economics that comprehends the global market:

The base premise of energy independence is the notion that we started importing oil because we didn’t have enough of it here at home. That’s about as accurate as the idea that Walmart fills its shelves with China-made items because the U.S. is unable to produce those things.

In fact, we get oil from all over for the same reasons we get tomatoes, avocados and cheap electronics from all over the place. It’s not always pretty, and it doesn’t always make sense on some levels -- shipping apples from New Zealand to Colorado just seems wrong -- but it makes sense to the market. Chesapeake says that spending $400 billion per year on foreign oil is “fiscally insane.” 

Yet the U.S. will also spend $400 billion on a variety of exports from China this year, not to mention the billions more we’ll spend on food, clothing, cars and electronic devices from a myriad of other countries. No one calls that fiscal insanity, nor do we hear politicians calling for iPhone independence. (High Country News – Circular Logic of Energy Independence)

So green dreamers like Jersey take a free-market principle and use it to argue against drilling for more oil. The same argument could be made for ceasing all manner of activity, from making our own cars to growing our own food. We could still get cars and food from other nations, but the diminution of supply would drive up prices and a lot of Americans would be unemployed.

The author goes on to explain how us pumping oil like crazy can make a difference in the market, and eventually make prices come down... Which will then make drilling in difficult sand and shale formations less lucrative, slowing operations there, resulting in less supply and higher prices, again making extraction profitable...  And around it goes.

 This is market economics 101, and it is no reason to forgo our own extraction that puts Americans to work

So free market forces are not “right” or “wrong.” The free market is an organic entity sending and receiving myriad internal and external signals every day, and as such is self-correcting, so long as central planners keep “rescues” and “protections” to an essential minimum. 

Also, there are no magic bullets or perfect solutions; only tradeoffs.  Until someone comes up with a viable alternative, oil and coal is here to stay.

We are the New Saudi Arabia

No, we're not going to start caning people (although I could think of a few public figures who richly deserve it).  We won't be punishing women for leaving the kitchen and driving, or charging them with sorcery.  We certainly won't follow Saudi Arabia's footsteps by killing homosexuals or funding Islamic terrorists.

We are the new Saudi Arabia, only with blessedly liberated women, loud and proud gay people, and pork BBQ.  We are sitting on top of a bountiful cornucopia of energy:

How vast are these resources? Here are some numbers:

Coal Resources

• The United States has 486 billion short tons of recoverable coal. This is enough coal to provide 464 years of electricity at today's current rate of coal consumption.
• While this is an incredible amount of coal, it is actually a very conservative estimate. This is because the estimate does not include Alaska's coal resources and Alaska holds more coal than then entire lower 48 combined.

 Oil Resources

• North America has nearly 1.8 trillion barrels of recoverable oil. That is twice as much as the combined reserves of all OPEC nations.  
• In oil shale resources alone, the United States has 1 trillion barrels of oil. This is nearly four times as large as Saudi Arabia's proven oil reserves. But due to regulations, these resources are essentially locked up.

Natural Gas Resources

• North America holds 4.2 quadrillion cubic feet of natural gas. That is enough natural gas to satisfy the United State's current natural gas demand for 575 years.
• This is more natural gas than the combined proved natural gas reserves of the next five nations (more than Russia, Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkmenistan combined). (Debunking the Myth)  

Imagine you've been driving a little crapbox of a car that gets poor gas mileage, is expensive and only works half the time.  If that's all you had, you'd just have to live with it and be thankful for what you've got.

Now imagine that a much better vehicle had been available all along, for a cheaper price, better gas mileage and ironclad reliability.  Imagine that the government had been keeping this vehicle a secret from you. You'd be pretty upset, wouldn't you?

Well, that's what government is trying to do to us with energy.  We are spilling over with oil, natural gas, and coal, yet the green corporatists insist on cramming down our throats wind, solar and battery powered toy cars that catch fire.  Worse, these immature technologies are unreliable and much more expensive than their time-tested rivals.  Forcing them upon a free and prosperous people requires government intervention!

That's what the green agenda is all about:  Tax and restrict and regulate and harry the fossil fuels industry until it is just as expensive as the green dreams.  If you can't gain the pinnacle on your own merits, just drag everybody else down to your debased level.

That is the difference between capitalism and socialism.  Capitalism raises a society up through competition.  The "Robber Barons" lowered the cost of lighting our homes and traveling as they competed for our business.  Socialism levels everybody flat in the name of equality.

We need to kick Obama and the Pelosicrats to the curb before they destroy the nation.  We have cheap and abundant energy; we'd be crazy not to use it.